


Treading Carefully

by ivarara



Series: Maxis [7]
Category: Warframe
Genre: zus is the overprotective dad friend definitely
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-23
Updated: 2019-01-23
Packaged: 2019-10-14 22:28:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17516999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivarara/pseuds/ivarara
Summary: Max and Ivara are sent on on Lua. As you can guess, our favorite adapters show up.





	Treading Carefully

The desolate landscape echoes with the sound of the crumbling buildings, their elegant perfection now laying in ruins after the sudden The desolate landscape echoes with the sound of the crumbling buildings, their elegant perfection now laying in ruins after the sudden exit from the Void. Pristine white walls lay in great heaps, their perfection now riddled with cracks and chips from wear and tear. The great golden arches over the straightaway, once examples of the symmetry and gold that the Orokin favored, lay in jagged fragments. The once tamed arboriforms now run rampant without masters to control their growth, their white roots now contributing to the decaying state of the surroundings.

Through a gaping hole in the side of the great building, Max and Trouvaille slip in, bypassing the grand entrance way altogether. They carefully pick their way over the rubble and ruin, working further into the building. The rampant roots serve as additional footholds, their sturdiness acting like bridges in the absence of walkways. The farther into the building they work, the more the outside murmurs and howls from the crumbling landscape fade while the sound of rattling gunfire and laser rifles grows.

Their job is to find a pathway that would give them an advantage in the squabble for territory, flanking around the side of the building to get behind the Corpus forces inside. So far, it’s been quick and easy work. They haven’t come across any stragglers to deal with, and the falling debris has managed to miss them completely  
.  
As they work their way back inside, Max is silent, focusing instead on keeping her balance on the arboriform until she can reach the walkway inside. Trou follows closely behind, his nails scrabbling on the rocks and roots to get a grip for himself.

“You still in one piece?” Her communicator buzzes as Zus frets and checks in.

“Yeah, still in one piece,” she repeats back. Having reached the walkway, there’s no further need for such caution and balance, so she can relax more and focus on her task.

“Good. Keep going and let me know once you’ve found an optimal position.”

She follows the walkway through the hall, her footsteps echoing and reverberating greatly in the grand room. The clicking of Trou’s nails is amplified as well, though neither worry about the noise, as they’re far enough behind enemy lines that there are no soldiers about to detect them.

“Understood—” The reply is cut short by the great groaning sound that reverberates in on itself, sounding more robotic as it does so.

“What was that?” The fretting voice in her comm demands immediately. “The Sentients? Spotter, are you still alright?”

She goes to echo his confusion, but the eerie, mysterious humming interrupts her before she can. It instills the instinctive urge to flee and hide, making her skin crawl with fear.

Trou notices how she tenses immediately, and bristles his fur as he works his way closer to her feet protectively.

The humming grows louder and closer, prompting her to quickly scramble back to the arboriform roots they had previously crossed, out of the room, and back to a pile of rubble big enough to hide the both of them. She still hasn’t answered the inquiries, only serving to make them repeatedly more worried each time she lacks a response.  
Oculysts silently enter the room, floating their way in over the rubble and wreckage delicately and gracefully. The pair idly scan whatever catches their interest, not having noticed the presence of the other pair of individuals accompanying them nearby.

Their humming, as ominous as it is, is calm and smooth in its tones, something that would likely be calming in any other circumstance. But here, knowing that its owner could summon fighters as soon as they’re scanned, the sound only serves to instill fear and anxiety into the listening ears.

“Answer me! Are you alright!?” The voice in the comm is near furious, Zus having passed fretting and going straight to panicked yelling.

In as quiet of a voice as she can manage, she tries answering. “No,” she ekes out. “There’s Oculysts here.” The realization that the two Sentients are between the safest way back to their platoon settles in, prompting her own onset of panic, though she manages to quell it enough to keep her wits about. “They’re between us and you guys. I don’t think I can get past them; I don’t know how.”

“Keep calm. Are you hidden?”  
“Yeah.”

“Stay there. Either they’ll lose interest and go somewhere else, or we’ll work our way close enough to be able to get to you. I suspect the former more than the latter to happen, so just stay where you are and keep calm. Got it?”

“Okay,” she works out in reply.

“Check in once in a while if you can. Don’t do it if you can’t do so without one of them noticing you.”

“Okay,” she works out again. The comm goes quiet, leaving her and Trouvaille to huddle in their meager hiding spot, hoping and praying that the Oculysts would lose interest before they were discovered. Trou’s honed in on the two intruders, carefully following their sounds as Max digs her fingers into the grip of her rifle to ground herself.

Minutes pass, the humming periodically growing closer and then fading as the pair of drones near and leave their area. They slowly work their way back to the end of the walkway, floating into the room to continue their scanning elsewhere with other things to catch their interest.

“They left the room,” she informs, voice trembling, if only slightly  
.  
“Good. Can you get out behind them to start heading this way without being seen?”

“I think so. Maybe.”

“Try for it, even if it means just barging past and hauling back this way.”

“Okay,” she answers finally. After double checking that the Oculysts had definitely left the room, she steels herself to move out. She slinks out from behind the pile of rubble, treading as lightly as possible. The tension in the air is palpable, the threat of being seen ever-present. They’re still distracted in the other room they’ve entered, scanning and idly floating in the gold-accented area. While they’re busy, the two slip out of their hiding spot and back down the walkway on light feet, trepidly making their way closer to the turned backs in front of them. They’re still humming, something that she can remember from back during the Old War.

The rifle held in her fear-induced death-grip shakes along with her hands as they snake their way down and closer to the entrance of the room the intruders are currently investigating. When the humming suddenly nears, she throws herself around a corner, Trouvaille on her heels. She leans back against the wall, trembling, hoping the retreat was quick enough that they weren’t seen.

Fortunately, it appears they’re in luck—the drones pass by the corner without any indication that they’d seen anything, instead meandering their way into a different room to examine. Acting before she can hesitate, she darts out and down the hall, her footsteps thumping down the elegant hallway as she hurries to the end. Once she reaches the entryway at the other side, she whips around the corner to wait and see if they’d been spotted and were being followed. Trou skitters around next to her as he reaches the end as well, his nails scrabbling on the cracked floor. After a few tense moments of waiting, it’s apparent that they’d gotten past without the drones noticing them, thankfully.

With the threat of detection fairly far behind them, they ease up on their frantic running through the hallways and rooms to a brisk jog instead. Finally, she reaches back into a pocket to grab her comm, quickly reporting their successful escape.

“Good. Now, listen to me. I’ll try to guide you through this place, back to where we are.”

And Zus does—it takes a while, with a few rooms being nearly identical in design, but they manage. The rattle and burst of gunfire near once again, and that’s their clue that they’re back near the rest of the platoon. Carefully, she makes her way into the room, sneaking through and past smaller areas to avoid any detection, though this time by the Corpus enemies stationed here.

As she rounds a corner, skirting the small, decorative water pools in the floor, she finally sees them. Checking around, she looks for any chance she’d have to run through the firefight to get back with the rest of their squad. Eventually, she does, and dashes quickly across the expansive floor to finally thread back into the group, relieved but still alert.

“You; are you alright?”

“Yes,” she replies to her fellow soldier, drawing out her rifle to contribute to the turf war they’re presently in.

“Good,” they answer as light-heartedly as possible in the middle of gunfighting, “I don’t know what everyone else would have done if you weren’t. Zus has already been fretting enough to annoy us a bit,” they finish with a chuckle.

As if on cue, Zus notices their presence. He briskly walks over, double checks that they’re in fact alright, and calls out to the rest of the group. “We’re heading back,” his voice rings out. “If those Oculysts stick around, they’ll eventually call in fighters, and we can’t deal with them right now. Leave them for the Corpus proxies to handle.” He turns and addresses her directly, now, “You, don’t go anywhere. Stick near us like glue.”

She nods, almost ashamedly of the ordeal. He opts to ignore the guilt in her posture and expression, and calls out one last time.  
“Alright, let’s go. The dropship is waiting for us already; we’re moving out, now.”


End file.
